Mr. Steele’s supporters rallied around him as a compelling advocate at ease making the Republican case on television and someone who would be the first African-American to lead the party. His opponents were apprehensive about Mr. Steele’s equally strong reputation as a showboat, an inexperienced manager given to advancing his own ambitions and prone to bursts of indiscretion. Even as the committee settled on him at the end of hours of balloting, Republican leaders were never quite sure which Michael Steele they would get.

Fourteen months later, the answer has become clear. At a time when the Republican National Committee is looking to take advantage of Democratic troubles and make gains in Congressional elections, Mr. Steele is commanding attention mostly for questionable expenditures by the committee, lagging fund-raising, staff defections and dismissals, an aggressive round of paid speeches and speaking appearances and politically inopportune remarks.

On Monday, confronting criticism of the committee for picking up a $2,000 tab for donors and staff at a West Hollywood strip and bondage club, Mr. Steele said in response to a question on “Good Morning America” on ABC that he and President Obama were being held to tougher standards because they were black.

In the best of circumstances, the head of a party out of power is the voice of the loyal opposition; at worse, the chairman is an irrelevance barely known outside party headquarters, hustling for time on the afternoon cable news shows. But Mr. Steele, who did not respond to a request for comment, has become something else: a remarkably public presence that even some Republicans say is distracting his party at a moment of high opportunity.

That concern spiked as Mr. Steele fired his chief of staff, Ken McKay — a popular figure who, Republicans said, learned of his dismissal when his wife saw the report on MSNBC — implicitly blaming him for spending abuses, including the strip club, that Mr. Steele said he had only learned about by reading his committee’s report to the Federal Election Commission.

The concern is evident in the extent to which big donors are writing checks to other Republican committees and how some prominent Republicans are voicing concerns about him.

“Right now it is crucial for the R.N.C. to get off the front pages of the newspapers,” said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Committee chairman who ran against Mr. Steele. “Get back to the mission of winning elections.”

Mr. Dawson, who did not rule out challenging Mr. Steele when his term is up, suggested that Mr. Steele did not appreciate the fact that not all publicity is good publicity, even for a chairman whose role includes keeping his party (and himself) in the spotlight.

Photo

Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee chairman.Credit
Marco Garcia for The New York Times

“Lee Harvey Oswald had 100 percent name ID and none of it was any good,” Mr. Dawson said. “The bad press hurts us on the ground. One donor called me up and said, ‘I’m not going to give those guys any money.’ “

Mr. Dawson’s views of frustration and concern were echoed — often on background — by other top Republicans.

“The chairman of the Republican Party should be able to lead,” Alex Castellanos, an unpaid senior adviser to the committee, said in an interview. "And right now I think he’s lost the confidence and the support of the people he’s leading."

In one sense, there is little that Republicans can do about Mr. Steele. It takes a two-thirds vote of the committee to remove him. That is a fight few Republican leaders want.

And Mr. Steele has made clear he would not leave quietly — he strongly suggested at his party’s winter meeting in Honolulu his intention to seek another term — and the last thing Republican leaders want now is an internal fight that would draw attention away from Democratic problems.

Which is not to say that Republicans have not been acting. In recent weeks, a number of party officials — including Karl Rove, the former adviser to former President George W. Bush, and Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the party — have set up an independent committee to help Republican candidates this fall. Top Republicans said they have advised donors to send checks not to the Republican National Committee but to the committees financing Senate and House candidates.

Mr. McKay’s dismissal was followed by the departure of Curt Anderson, who had been one of Mr. Steele’s top advisers. Mr. Anderson issued a statement supporting Mr. McKay.

On Tuesday, Sean Mahoney, one of three Republican National Committee members from New Hampshire, resigned, giving The Union Leader of New Hampshire a copy of a letter that excoriated Mr. Steele for the spending abuses. “The recent scandal involving R.N.C. funds being used to entertain a small crowd at a Los Angeles strip club is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Mr. Mahoney wrote.

Faced with so many races in play, the Republicans cannot afford to have a drop-off in contributions. The strip club episode could turn off conservative voters. And the questions about lavish Republican spending undercut the Republican Party as it seeks to present itself as the party of financial constraint and good governance.

John Weaver, a Republican consultant, said Mr. Steele had been given a needed second chance with the shake-up.

“We’re not going into a presidential cycle without him facing a challenge,” Mr. Weaver said. “What he does in the next few months will decide whether he can survive that.”

A version of this news analysis appears in print on April 7, 2010, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: G.O.P. Squirms as an Unwelcome Spotlight Focuses on Its Leader. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe